


Not With Our Eyes

by poisontaster



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Canon Related, Divination, Gen, Loss of Control, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-18
Updated: 2006-01-18
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2220390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> No one was going to believe Sibyll Trelawney, resident loon of Hogwarts School of Magic.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not With Our Eyes

In truth, Viktor hadn’t wanted to join the Bulgarian team.

Not, you understand, because he doesn’t love Quiddich—a foolish out-and-out lie—but because he knew from school how it would go.

He is—as usual—the youngest. _A baby, as yet wet behind the ears_ , Vulchanov sneered, eyeing Viktor speculatively over the greasy rim of a glass of firewhiskey. Viktor has heard variations on this for many years; it’s no hardship any more to stand silent and take it, though his eyes water from the blue haze of cigar smoke. He is not here to make friends.

And then there is Karkaroff (or his toady Levski—the _other_ Levski—in the instances where Karkaroff cannot leave Durmstrang in the hands of the assistant headmaster Scholl), always trailing behind him, reminding him he is a National Treasure and that his reputation is the reputation of Bulgaria.

In any case, there was very little choice given to him on the matter. He is a National Treasure, after all.

And in the end, if he hadn’t, things might have turned out very differently.

 

****

**Part I. Life is Wonderful**

His face hurts. Quite a lot, actually. Which is not all bad, because it means they have left him alone, teammates and keepers alike.

“You should have told the doctors to _fix_ that raven’s beak, while they were at it,” Volkov says—not as unkindly as Zograf would have—as they troop out of the tent to get comprehensively and raucously drunk.

“Feh. It’s the nose that makes him so aerodynamic,” Dimitrov answers. “Why do you think that damned Irish Beater did it?” and then they were gone in a jangle of scornful laughter. They haven’t forgiven him for taking the Snitch and letting the Irish win.

Viktor lay on his cot, breathing shallowly through his mouth and tasting blood in the back of his throat. They are singing, the British, and have been for hours. It’s puzzling, and serves to remind him how far away he is. The Ministry would never have permitted such a revel, such disorder, at home. He’s never been able to determine if he approves of that or not.

“They’re coming.”

He didn’t hear the flap open and he’s not expecting anyone. He sits in a rush. Even the slight pressure of the air against raw and bruised skin makes him blind with pain, a dull red stab from cheekbones to brain. The voice itself, low-pitched and slightly graveled, gives him nothing to determine gender or identity. When the haze clears from his eyes, he is surprised by the person—woman—in front of him.

She is tiny, no larger than a child, and done up like a gypsy in a garish array of bangles, baubles and beads. He thinks she must sound like a brass band every time she takes a step, and he wonders how he didn’t hear her come in. Then he wonders what happened to Gabrovski and Hadjiev, the men who were supposed to be guarding the tent. “May I help you?” he asks, after a moment’s fumbling to remember to do so in English. _Be respectful of your elders,_ the voice of his mother intones from memory. _I should not like to hear a Krum has forgotten his manners._ “Ma’am?” he adds belatedly.

“Viktor—“ She says his name as if she knows him. He wonders if that says something about him, that he inspires that half-exasperated tone in others. But they so often do say and think that they know him, these girls—women—who call themselves his fans. Her look, however, magnified behind the enormous crystal rounds of her spectacles, is not the same as the hungry half-adoring looks he is used to. It’s worried, and sort of sad. Perhaps, he thinks, this is a new kind of fandom. “I want you to get up now and run,” she says. Her voice is gentle, persuasive, but unease prickles the short hairs on the back of his neck. Both his broom and his wand are too far away to do him any good. He curses himself for the oversight. “And I want you to remember that when you _could_ , you _did_. And when you can’t…” Her somber expression turns mournful, again enhanced by those enormous insectile glasses. “Well. It isn’t your fault. And afterwards, if you still feel…raw about it, you come and find me, and we’ll talk.”

Enough is enough. Elder, fan, madwoman or whatever… He throws out one hand: _”Accio wand!”_ , but by the time the smoothed hornbeam smacks against his palm, his visitor is gone. Instead, Levski—the _other_ Levski—stands in the flap as if he’s been there all the time, looking simultaneously drunk and irritated.

“Don’t just _stand_ there, you great lump!” Levski comes to grab him by the arm, tugging. “The damn British have gone more insane than usual; they’ve set fire to their own encampment and they are rioting. We are leaving. Now.”

 

****

**Part II. I’ll Fly Away**

It’s a strange interlude to be sure. Mostly, though, it’s swallowed in the terror of the long flight through the campground to where their Portkey is hidden, and then the long tediousness of his “conversation” with Karkaroff about the game, about the Death Eaters, and about the sign of the serpent, gleaming poisonous in the night sky. He doesn’t mention his visitor, though it isn’t—entirely—a conscious oversight. It just seems so much less remarkable than anything else that happened.

Karkaroff assigns him extra practice sessions under Levski’s sadistic oversight and lets him go, distracted, irritable, chafing fretfully at his wrist under his robe.

The next day, Karkaroff makes the announcement about the Triwizard Tournament. Of course Viktor is going to be Durmstrang’s Champion. Of course he is.

 

****

**Part III. When I See You Again**

He’s pretty much forgotten the whole thing; up until the moment he sees her again. At Hogwarts of all places.

They have to audit classes, as part of the ‘spirit of cooperation’ between schools. Karkaroff sneers every time he says it. In private, at least. “But,” he admits judiciously, “It never goes amiss to observe the competition. Take this opportunity to learn all you can, and be thankful that you attend a _proper_ school; one that appreciates the significance of good breeding.” He sniffs through his high, thin nose and waves Viktor off, sparing him the necessity of a reply.

He doesn’t know what he expected from Hogwarts. As a rule, he tries _not_ to expect things. Even so, he’s pretty sure he didn’t expect to find her here, let alone kited out in the same clashing gimcrackery and gauze he’d first seen her in. Or maybe they’re different; it’s hard to tell with all the jewelry. The glasses are the same—nearly the size of saucers and thick—but the eyes behind them seem dafter than he remembers. She’s older than he thought, too. Old enough, apparently, to be a teacher. Professor Trelawney, according to the Indian girl who raises her hand while making doe eyes at him.

“Close your mouth,” Levski hisses and elbows Viktor in the side. Viktor startles, and closes his mouth.

She circulates around the room, Trelawney, and now she sounds like the marching band he envisioned, clanking and chiming with every movement. The voice she uses is nothing like the graveled tone he remembers; high and falsetto, it scrapes across his nerves with her every word. Most of her predictions are dire and ridiculous in their ominousness; Viktor starts to wonder why exactly he’d been so weirded out in the tent. Probably the pain, and the painkillers, he thinks now.

She comes past them in a patter of silver bangles and patchouli. Viktor braces himself for her to repeat her pronouncements of the previous week, here in front of everyone. It’s okay. Everyone will laugh, including Viktor, and then it will be over.

But she only blinks myopically at him, as if she doesn’t recognize him at all, and walks away.

 

**Part IV. How You Remind Me**

“Why?” is the first thing he asks, when he tracks her down.

It took some ingenuity to lose Levski. Well, not so much ingenuity as miles, jogging around the Hogwarts grounds. Levski comes by his whipcord thinness naturally; he hates exercise with a fiery and indolent passion. Viktor’s calves ache and he hasn’t yet managed to stop panting, because he ran all the way up to the Divination teacher’s high tower, but he’s alone, and that’s the important thing.

“My dear boy,” she says in that high, trembling falsetto. She looks startled; she looks lost. “May I help you?”

“No.” At once he is angry. Viktor is seldom angry; it makes for long lectures and even more careful watching than usual. Still, he is angry now. He feels cheated, of something vital and important, while he wasn’t looking. “Do not. Do not do that. I saw you there. At the Quiddich World Cup.”

She draws herself up, shrill and indignant. “I assure you, young man, you did no such thing! I have… _responsibilities_ here, and I take them _quite_ seriously! I’ve no time to…to…go _gadding_ about such vulgar entertainments as a Quiddich. It…it takes _peace_ and _quiet_ and…and most of all _calm_ to encourage the spirits to come forth and _speak_ and the…the inner Eye to open…” she gestures, theatrical and airy. “Not that I would expect a boy your age to understand.” A sniff now, disdainful. Viktor’s lost track of how many expressions have crossed Professor Trelawney’s face. “Now.” A wrist to her forehead, her eyes raise mistily to the heavens. “I have a class coming shortly and if I am to instruct them in anything at all, I must take these precious few moments to _commune_ with the Powers. Good day.” She turns on one gilded slipper and flounces off, a particularly gaudy scarecrow.

And that, it seems, is that.

Except…

 _She didn’t make any noise,_ Viktor thinks later, _when she walked away_.

 

**Part V. Eye in the Sky**

Voices.

In his head there are always voices, possibly the reason he says so little. Why add to the noise?

Hers: _Viktor, I want you to get up now and run. And I want you to remember that when you **could** , you **did**. And when you couldn’t… Well. It isn’t your fault._

Behind that, his uncle Tolya, one late night, expansive and drunk on too much firewhiskey. _Feh. A Krum does not run. He will chase, yes? To get what he wants. But he does not run. Only cowards run._

He thinks about this at night. He thinks about this with the dragon. Karkaroff told him what to expect—a confession that makes him more than a little uneasy; Krums do not cheat, either—but expectation and reality are quite far stars from each other when staring down a pair of nostrils the size of Bludgers.

He freezes.

It doesn’t last long; just long enough for that raspy voice to scrape once more through memory: _…And when you couldn’t… Well. It isn’t your fault._

He thinks, _I can run._

And just that realization is enough to break his paralysis. The spell comes to him in a burst and he lashes out with his wand. And then it’s over.

 _Not this time,_ he thinks, and he doesn’t know if what he feels is relief or dismay.

 

**Part VI. Pretty When You Cry**

_Hermione Granger._

Just the sound of her name, running like a ribbon through his mind, foreign, melodic and simultaneously spiky, makes his heart skip a beat.

“I don’t know what it is that you see in her,” Levski sniffs, sprawled wide on one of the Slytherin’s sofas. He rubs the upholstery’s nap with his knuckles. “It isn’t half bad how these Britishers live, hey? I could get used to this. In any case,” he continues, returning to the main thread of his discourse, “the girl’s flat as my grandma’s washboard, she’s tactless, and she talks too much. I’m frankly amazed she doesn’t have a squint, considering how much time she spends in those books of hers, and that _hair_ …!”

“Levski,” Viktor’s voice comes rumbling out of his chest, deeper and rougher than it normally does. It forces the aide’s eyes up to him and stops the words in his nattering mouth. “Shut up.”

He leaves the Slytherin common room and goes to find her, finally having the courage to ask her to the Yule Ball.

She says yes. She says _yes_.

The Ball starts in laughter, but it ends in tears. _Her_ tears, shed in droplets like silver rain while her red-haired friend—the one with all the brothers—storms off. Standing amid a cluster of girls all too happy to take Hermione’s place, Viktor swallows this hurt as he has all the rest and thanks God he isn’t fourteen anymore.

_Well. It isn’t your fault._

 

**Part. VII. All These Hours Undone**

Of course they pick Hermione for the trial of the merfolk; what else here would he care about? His broom? Well, he _does_ care about his broom—a particularly fine Arktorum 320Z—but he can see where that would not be appropriate.

The water frightens him; a substance in which he can’t fly or run, one that presses thickly against his skin like an enormous hand. It’s the furthest from the sky one can get and he doesn’t like it one bit.

There is a moment, under the water, when he sees her—well, _smells_ her really; sharks are quite shortsighted, and everything inside him tenses and burns. _This,_ he thinks. _This is it._

He hardly remembers what ‘it’ is anymore; months of waiting for a hazy and indefinable _something_ that hasn’t come. That never comes. He’s left only with a faint whisper: _It isn’t your fault._

What does that mean?

It distracts him enough that he mangles the Transfiguration. Or _something_ does; he didn’t think his concentration so feeble it would fracture a spell Karkaroff drilled into him so thoroughly, but the spell _does_ mangle, so to what else can he attribute it?

Holding just the shark’s head on a body never meant to accommodate it is difficult; more difficult than if he’d conjured the whole body. It’s hard to think through the spell and the arrow-sharp shark brain. It’s not until Potter impatiently shoves the rock into his hand does he remember that he _has_ hands. It’s bad and a bad time, and he’s embarrassed by it by the time he gets Hermione to the surface and they are pulled out.

“Oh, Viktor!” Hermione hugs him once he banishes the shark’s head. Like everything she does, she throws her whole self into it. It drives the cold from him, and maybe that’s why he blurts out his hasty invitation to Bulgaria. Maybe. Because it isn’t anything he’s thought of before this moment; certainly not after the events of the Yule Ball. And yet the words come tripping off his tongue, like they belong to someone else entirely.

He feels…strange. His skin tingles. Unpleasantly, as if roved by hundreds of tiny crawling insects. He knows this feeling. He _knows_ this feeling.

He looks across to the judges’ platform where Karkaroff sits in solitary splendor; the others clustered close around Harry Potter and his two prizes. For a moment, Karkaroff’s eyes meet his. Viktor is not skilled at reading things from people’s faces, their expressions, but there is no mistaking Karkaroff’s smile.

Viktor’s stomach clenches into a tiny knot. He almost thinks he’ll be sick. He’s not sure why. It’s not like it’s the first time he’s been under Imperius.

**Part VIII. The Next Movement**

After the shock fades, the anger rises, slow and inexorable like the tide. Why would Karkaroff want to sabotage him? So much emphasis has been laid upon this tournament.

“The pride of Durmstrang and Bulgaria as a whole are in your hands, Viktor; I cannot emphasize how important this is—to all of us, Viktor. You will not let us down, will you, Viktor? Think of your family.”

He did not want this. He did not _want_ this. Why push it into his hands, only to snatch it away?

 

**Part IX. Winner Takes Nothing**

He sees her again not long after that. It’s funny; he’s almost forgotten about her. At least until he sees the spangled hem of her robe, peeking briefly from beneath a long, shabby cloak, remarkably nondescript. She’s walking along the far edge of the lake, where few of the students are energetic enough to go.

“Professor Trelawney!” he hails her. He’s been running and it’s little effort to run a bit more and catch up with her. “May I walk with you?”

“Oh!” Trelawney starts, clutching her thin throat with one over-jeweled hand. “Oh, great _Merlin_ , you scared the lights out of me!”

She is using the higher pitched and wispy voice. That’s fine. Viktor is a Seeker, it’s all about the waiting. At home, he was a hunter as well, tracking wolves and fox through the snow and brush. There are many things Viktor does not excel at. Patience is not one of them.

“I am sorry,” he says, though he has no doubt that she knew he was there from the first. “I did not mean to startle you.”

Trelawney waves a hand at him and forgets to make it languid. “Yes, yes. When one is communing with the spirits, it is often difficult to pay attention to matters of the flesh. Of course, _you_ would not understand this.” She regards him from behind those enormous spectacles, watery eyes rendered almost colorless. “You seem to be a particularly thick boy. Spiritually speaking.”

“Yes ma’am,” Viktor says. “I have been told that before.” Trelawney’s step has increased, but she’s far shorter. It’s nothing for him to lengthen his stride a little and keep up with her.

Trelawney sniffs, her thin nose jutting a little higher into the air. She clutches her cloak tighter around her, but she doesn’t forbid him to come.

They walk in silence for a time. Viktor doesn’t mind. He dislikes the chattiness of the English, constant and intrusive, as if they’ve forgotten how to be silent. It is especially annoying when they expect one to be equally talkative in return. Words have never been Viktor’s friends; too many in number and too delicately shaded for someone who likes simple, primary colors. Occasionally, the rust brown grass catches at the bells on the hem of her robe, and they chime, sweet and joyful.

“They use it sometimes, on the students,” Viktor says finally, after tracing the looping running track of a mole through the broken ground of the field. He sees no other tracks, and thinks it must have been one of the many Hogwarts owls that scared it so. “To help us, they say, but also to make us obey.”

“Yes, I know,” Trelawney says, as if her mind is somewhere else. Then she blinks, drawn back to herself, and her tone ratchets up another octave. “I mean…I mean… What?”

“Your pardon,” Viktor says contritely. “I was speaking of my school, Durmstrang. They say that we learn the Dark Arts there, but it is not so. They are…demonstrated, but they are not taught.”

Trelawney _ahems_ deep in her throat, as if she cannot frame a suitable reply. For a while, that’s enough, foraging onward through the rough and unmown grass and occasionally putting out a hand to help the Professor over the worst rucks and breaks in the ground.

“Will I die?” he asks finally. He doesn’t feel dismay or pleasure at the prospect; it’s only a Snitch which he must catch for the game to end.

Trelawney’s smile is watery and faded and sad. “My dear boy,” she says, “We all die sometime.” She doesn’t bother to disguise her voice, and again he’s struck by the soft gravel-rasp of it, the tone of the unutterably tired.

It takes him a while before he realizes where he’s heard that tone before. Mostly because it’s been so long since he’s really _heard_ the sound of his own voice.

 

**Part IX. Everything is Everything**

She doesn’t come out to the lake again, though he waits for her three days running. Time starts to move faster. Things happen.

Hermione talks to him more regularly. Despite his reservations, he likes her company and he doesn’t send her away. What she talks about, mostly, is Ron and Harry—of which Karkaroff approves. “That is my boy,” he says, with a wink and an elbow to Viktor’s arm. “Find the advantage, and make it work. This, this is why you are such a treasure, Viktor-mine.”

His anger is done. Only the tiredness remains, and he wants it to be over.

Twice more he feels the Imperius, sliding between the inside and outside in an impenetrable blood colored barrier. He watches himself do things he wouldn’t. He hears himself say things, voice thickening until even he can hear his “accent”. They last only a few moments, these spells, and then they are gone again.

He thinks Trelawney is avoiding him.

Then the man, Crouch, tries to brain him in the dark.

Sick and nauseous, he crawls through the ship’s porthole and onto his broom. There are two of them, and he’s grateful he’s picked the right one. He feels like there’s lightning bottled in his aching head and twitching through his restless nerves. He’s never felt anything like this before. It’s something like when he plays Quiddich; it’s nothing like when he plays Quiddich.

The tower is locked. Viktor pounds on the door, heavy furious blows he feels all the way into his shoulder. _“Why?”_ he shouts, uncaring of who can hear him, or if this is appropriate behavior for a National Treasure. “You…you…” Even in his desperation, in his rage, he can’t bring himself to curse at her. He knows she can hear him. He knows even if he doesn’t know how. “Why? _Why?_ If you know something, if you have something to tell me, just _tell_ me! Just tell me,” he repeats, softer, as he slides to the floor, defeated. His head aches, as if in sympathy with the door. “It’s my _life_ ,” he whispers. “What are you afraid of? Why won’t you just tell me?”

There’s no answer.

 

**Part X. The Devil You Know (God is a Man)**

_No…_

_No, don’t make me…_

_Please._

_Oh God, no. No. No._

_Don’t…don’t make me._

_Stop it! Stop! It’s not me, it’s not. Please, someone, anyone…it’s **not** me!_

_No. No more._

_Please._

_**Please.** _

“Stupefy!”

Viktor has never heard a more blessed word in his life.

 

**Part XI. She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)**

_…And I want you to remember that when you **could** run, you **did**. And when you couldn’t… Well. It isn’t your fault. And afterwards, if you still feel…raw about it, you come and find me, and we’ll talk._

“…Trines are approximately four signs apart by virtue of their one-hundred and twenty degree angle. As a result, we can expect the planets involved to usually be of the same Element, be it Fire, Air, Earth, or Water. A trine allows for the easy flow of energy between two… Well. Viktor.” Professor Trelawney folds her bejeweled hands in her lap, expectant.

She’s alone. Catching his look, she gives him a flat smile. “I find astrology soothing, when I’m feeling a bit shattered. I can recite my grandmother’s book from memory, if so inclined. My nerves are…often shot.”

He catches himself unsteadily on the doorframe. Fighting the Imperius really sapped him, hurt him, damaged things deep inside. According to Hogwarts’s busybody nurse, he should not be out of the infirmary at all. But he must know. He’s waited all this time. “Why?” he asks again.

She sighs. Her eyes are unusually clear behind her glasses, sad rather than manic. “Because it wouldn’t have solved anything,” she says, which really is no answer at all.

Viktor stares at her.

“I couldn’t have stopped it, Viktor. No one was going to believe me. No one was going to believe Sibyll Trelawney, resident loon of Hogwarts School of Magic.”

“I would have.”

Trelawney throws her hands up in the air in a clash of silver. “Oh, yes, _you_ ,” she says scornfully. “You’re not stupid, boy. Don’t act like it. What makes you think you’re any less a slave to your circumstances than I am? You, Viktor Krum, Hero of Bulgaria, Quiddich Champion and the best Durmstrang has to offer? Do you really think you could have gone to…Karkaroff…” She hesitates slightly over the name, a small enough infraction to pass unnoticed by almost anyone. “…and said, ‘oh yes, Headmaster, I’ve changed my mind! I’m not going to compete after all? One of the teachers from _Hogwarts_ says so!’”

“And me…I’ve spent years-- _decades_ \--making everyone believe I haven’t got any more ability than a quince to divine the future…”

“Including yourself?” Viktor interrupts, quietly. Once it would have been unthinkable to say such a thing to her, an adult, a teacher. Now he doesn’t care much.

Trelawney deflates all at once, and he remembers how tiny she is, her feet not even touching the floor. Thin, colorless eyelashes sweep down and hide her eyes. “I was afraid,” she admits, stifled. “I _am_ afraid. You don’t know…”

“What did they do to you?” Viktor uses the tables and backs of chairs to navigate his way across the room to her. As usual, the windows are closed and the room is stifling, but he sees she’s added bars of spell-written silver over the glass. They’re not new, faded and tarnished with use. Trelawney flinches at the question, and he sees how her breath comes faster by the rise and fall of the tangle of medallions around her neck. He presses, “The Death Eaters.”

Her lips are colorless; she wets them briefly. “Nothing. Nothing.”

“Liar.”

Trelawney says nothing, breathing faster still.

“It was Karkaroff, was it not?” He should feel horrified. This is not the behavior of a hero, a treasure. He thinks of his uncle, Tolya, _He will chase, yes? To get what he wants._ So perhaps this is what it is to be a Krum, to be eighteen and angry, filled with the seething boil of what was done to him.

They think him stupid, because he doesn’t talk, because off the broom he is not handsome, or graceful or charming…but he’s not. He is not a stupid boy. Not at all.

Trelawney’s eyes open, the shock—and the pain, God in Heaven, the pain—magnified into perfect clarity by those glasses she would normally employ as her shield. “My…my family,” she says finally. “They are a long line of Seers. He knew it. Not…not Karkaroff. _Him._ ” Her folded hands clutch a little tighter, white at the knuckles. Her eyes flick to him. “They say he’s back, you know.”

Viktor nods. The British seemed less concerned about it than he would have expected, but maybe they’re all like Trelawney. He considers. Maybe they are all like him.

“I can’t… I won’t…” Trelawney flounders. Her earrings swing sharply into her cheek, emerald shards of fire. “There was a prophecy,” she says, somewhat desperately. “Someone told Him there would be a prophecy, about…about a boy, who could defeat Him.” Again the tense writhe of her fingers, rings cutting into paper white skin.

“He came to you,” Viktor says, not a question.

“He came to me,” she agrees, colorless. The rust in her voice grits deeper. “Or, rather, his servants, his Death Eaters, came.” Trelawney looks down at her hands. He can see her make a concentrated effort to unlock her fingers and lay them flat upon her knees.

He’d known she was hiding, beneath her gaudy sequins and dithering voice. He’d known she was scared. He just…hadn’t thought it all the way through, the _why_. He hadn’t thought that what had happened to her could be as bad as what they’d done to him. He didn’t think anything could be worse than that.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his own voice rusty and weak.

“No.” Trelawney shakes her head. “I’m the one who’s sorry. You were right. I… I never wanted the gift. My only defense lay in convincing them—everyone—I’m a fraud. A twittering lunatic who sees dark portents in the movement of the shadows over the grass. But you can’t hide from some things, as much as you’d like to. Merlin knows I tried.”

“Then why? Why tell me at all?”

“Because it’s _not_ your fault, Viktor.” Trelawney reaches forward and grabs his chin. Her eyes bore into his. He doesn’t know how he ever thought them insectile. “What Crouch did to you, what he made you do…” Viktor tries to turn his face away, but her grip only tightens. “It’s not your fault. It’s what they do.”

Viktor hasn’t cried since he was four. He doesn’t want to cry now, but his throat is tight, his chest burns and his eyes sting like they’ve been dosed with lemon. “Yes,” he agrees. “But this… They did this to _me_.”

Not _because_ of him, but just he’d been there, convenient to be picked up and used. He was Viktor Krum, Durmstrang Champion, Quiddich star, and Bulgarian National Treasure and they’d _used_ him. With no more thought than you’d use a wand, or a spanner.

You’d think he’d be used to it by now.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://omniocular.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://omniocular.livejournal.com/)**omniocular** ’s January (2006) challenge: Character Roulette.


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